"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall"Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman"A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today programme"Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife

Saturday, June 07, 2014

Six of the Best 441

Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian reviews David Marquand's 'Mammon's Kingdom: An Essay on Britain, Now'.

"An eventual Conservative victory by just 22 votes (after four recounts) the Earndale campaign was also noticeable for the burgeoning love between the Labour and Conservative candidates and for the fact that no sooner had the Conservative candidate been elected than his uncle’s death elevated him to the Lords voiding the result of the election." Philip Cowley and Matthew Bailey on The Conversation look at the 1959 satire on politics 'Left, Right and Centre'.

"Since I first wrote about the Ladybird books obsession with modernism ... I've become increasingly fascinated by the role they played in fostering a spirit of excitement in Britain's postwar schemes to modernise," says Dirty Modern Scoundrel.

"He stands now as an exemplary figure, a committed artist working simultaneously against and within a medium that might speak to everyone. His work remains to embody a kind of joy that things, at least on television, really are all right." Also in the Guardian, Michael Newton pays tribute to Dennis Potter.

Our Statures Touch the Skies on Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the philosopher) who lost an arm in the First World War but still enjoyed a career as a concert pianist.

ViralSpell has some of the colour photographs Denys and Margaret Gardiner took on their honeymoon as they drove 900 miles up and down the east coast of England in August 1939, just weeks before the Second World War broke out.